Still I was ablaze with want

for sex     yes       but mostly

I just wanted it to end

My friends & their partners

are in the main room playing Monopoly

discussing gains & losses & losses

I’m invited as an afterthought

Still ablaze I put on my coat

It is 3am     and the downpour is torrential

I shouldn’t be going anywhere

I’m not sure I’m going anywhere

so much as testing if anyone would stop me

while I stroll past them        They didn’t

& when I stepped outside to quench

the gene which gives me my father’s sadness

it rained until every puddle was rabid

NARCISSUS IMPOSTOR SYNDROME

Vanity is a sin          but

look what happened

in its absence       maybe it is hard to

leave because I have never

had a face before     less

a question of beauty

than what it is to be unworthy

of even the smallest touch

Maybe every myth is stuck

with thirst      to see a stranger

and never be as much a stranger

again         part of me is always at a lake

that I was not invited to

so when I see anything     I thirst

Once     a boy with insistent hands

touched me in a dark so complete

I lost my own face for months

I couldn’t cum      and wouldn’t

speak    thus drought    thus I

would rather drown     I would

rather be misinterpreted as loving

myself so much      I die only for me

Only when I drown am I enough

On any land      I fear I am a fraud

I pledge allegiance      only to what

is upfront about wanting me dead

I pledge allegiance to me     sometimes

But I am afraid even of the water

Stupid boy          planned his own death

so poorly          he survived

THE AUTHOR IS OFTEN MISTAKEN FOR OBAMA’S LONG LOST SON

All over the news it is said

He is once in a generation

I understand this to mean

there can only be one of us

and he already is    and often

things are lost for a reason

Me and all my margin heavy

blood-loose a pack of scarlet

hounds howling at the edge of

acceptable     I want to be

what he is but I’m just barely

over the fact I can be seen at all

and the resemblance is marginal

a question of the right brilliance

a question of the hypothetical

a question of If I had a son he would

probably not look like me either

The only math I’m good at is counting

what ain’t mine       My tongue

My hands        Faces that can be traded

for other things I can’t have     The good

silver creeping at the edge of my scalp

I steady plot the course of history

by the lengths of presidencies

sundial dictating a shadow

All I can remember about time

is what man wanted me dead then

I hear the 80’s and a hand ribboned

with blue veins raptures the choir